


Is That What a Dinosaur Would Do? (You Can't Just Give Up)

by Etheostoma



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: Bonding, Emotions, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Slice of Life, Softness, Unloading Some Angst Here, family is what you make it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:49:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etheostoma/pseuds/Etheostoma
Summary: It was hard for Alison to remember sometimes that Kitty was one of the older ghosts, at least in terms of actual time spent dead. She was so young physically, and so sweetly naive, that it was all too easy to get caught up in that facade and forget that the cheerful, friendly young woman was also a centuries-old specter who died well before her time.Even the most optimistic soul would have to have a lifetime’s worth of regrets after all of that.Or: Kitty and the Captain have a heart to heart, with Alison and the gang not far behind.
Relationships: Alison & Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019), Alison & The Captain (Ghosts TV 2019), The Captain & Kitty (Ghosts TV 2019)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66





	Is That What a Dinosaur Would Do? (You Can't Just Give Up)

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have a WIP going in another fandom? Yup. Does it matter? Nope--go ahead and have 5k words of random ghost bonding! I love this show so so so much, and these idiots have been clamoring for some representation in my posted works for a good while now.
> 
> Hopefully this does them justice, I'm looking forward to playing more games in this fandom!
> 
> Comments and kudos always appreciated!

Night was a strange time in Button House.

Ghost or no ghost, most evenings the majority of the house’s occupants could be found sprawled out in bed, arranged atop one of the house’s many questionably-upholstered chairs, or—in Robin’s case—curled up on a rug in front of the fire. Alison had been quite chuffed to realize that her inherited hauntings did indeed follow their own nighttime routines, the main body of which included sleeping as though still living. While she certainly did not expect the ghosts to remain abed all night—after all they _were_ ghosts—the fact that they took themselves to their rooms, or at least to the far reaches of the house, at the same time nearly every evening offered her a bit of relief she had not been expecting.

“So, they usually _aren’t_ here in the bedroom?” Mike asked dubiously. Even after nearly eighteen months in the house, and over a year of being intimately aware of their incorporeal roommates, he could not quite bring himself to relinquish his initial assumption that at least one ghost was always present in the rooms around him.

“Nope.” Alison shut the bedroom door, clicked off the light, and all but dove into bed, flinging covers into the air and tucking her toes between Mike’s calves. “It’s usually only Thomas or Kitty you have to worry about in here anyway, and I’ve been _trying_ to work on that with them.” She sighed happily, wedging herself more closely to her furnace of a husband. “God, I am exhausted. Next we decide to give ourselves a one-week deadline to repaint the window frames, just push me _out_ another window instead.”

Mike winced at the icy brush of her feet against his skin. “Done,” he agreed, equally beat. He flung the blanket over the top of them both and kissing the top of her messy head. “Have to ask, though, what happened to wearing socks?” He squeezed his legs around her numb toes, grinning to himself as she scrambled to maintain contact.

“Was doing, but they got caught on that bit of splintered molding out in the hall and ripped,” Alison told him. “Had to chuck them in the bin.”

“Oh but I loved those,” Mike said mournfully.

Snickering, Alison jabbed him in the side of his flannel sleep shirt. “Don’t lie, you hated them—weren’t you always the one telling me socks weren’t made to be _that_ pink?”

“Well, the color was horrendous, yeah, but fuzzy socks _and_ toe socks in _one_ pair of socks? I already have a pair for myself in my Amazon cart.”

“Hypocrite.”

Mike shrugged. “I’m a warm hypocrite.”

Alison grinned. “Alright, you win. Budge over, warm hypocrite, and let me sleep.”

Mike paused for a moment. “You said _trying_.”

“What?”

“Earlier, talking about the ghosts—you said you’d been trying to work on keeping them out of the bedroom.”

“Mmm.” Alison snuggled deeper into the blankets, refusing to open her eyes.

Apprehensively, Mike scanned the darkened room. “So, does that mean they don’t always listen?”

“Erm.” Then Alison _did_ open her eyes, shifting on the pillow the give Mike one of her patented apologetic looks. “Maybe?”

He grimaced. “Great. But—no one here now, yeah?”

“Not a one,” she promised him. “Left Kitty and Mary downstairs watching Friends—Julian’s on the computer and swore he would push the remote to shut it off when they finished. Fanny and Pat each went to bed, Humphrey is—actually, I don’t know where his head is, but I think his body is visiting the plague ghosts.” She cocked an ear for a moment, frowning at the window. “Think Robin is up in the attic howling at the moon—“ She shoved up a hand over his mouth to muffle any questions. “No, no idea why, not asking. The Captain usually patrols for a while and then I _think_ he sleeps, and Thomas is—“

“Thomas is what?”

Eyes flying wide open as Thomas’ head appeared through the wall beside the bathroom door, Alison yelped and jumped upright, sheets and blankets flying in every direction. “ _Thomas!”_ she screeched. “We’ve talked about this!”

At her yelp, Mike bolted out of bed, plastering himself to the wall and looking about with wild eyes. “What, where—one’s here now?”

“Just Thomas,” Alison said tiredly, waving her husband back to bed and glaring at the form beside her.

“Oh, okay then. ‘lo,” Mike mumbled, immediately appeased once he knew the identity and approximate location of the ghost in question. It wasn’t their actual _presence_ that bothered him at all, but rather more the knowledge that they could be there and he wouldn’t know—well, _that_ and the ever-present, lingering afterthought that one could be lurking in the shower. He tossed a haphazard smile in Thomas’s general direction, gaze missing the hazy figure by a good five feet, and slid back into bed while pulling the covers up to his chin. “What’s he want?”

Glaring, Alison leveled a stern gaze at their nighttime visitor. “I don’t know yet,” she replied. “But whatever it is, it had better be one _heck_ of a reason. I feel like I’ve gotten a grand total of fifteen hours of sleep for the _week—_ tonight has been a long time coming and is so overdue I can’t even think of a good analogy.”

“I know, I know!” Thomas’s eyes were wide and guileless, his tone apologetic. “Be calm, fair Alison, for I do have just cause for disturbing your nighttime riposte.” He emerged fully from the wall, gliding through and throwing up an arm to stall her lecture. “Once you and Michael go to your room, we are _not_ invited. I have resigned myself to the impracticalities of our love, conceded to the covenants of your standing marriage contract. Have I not left you to your own devices nearly every night for nigh on three month’s time?”

“Fine yes, you have,” Alison conceded, head dropping into one hand. “You actually have.” She peeked out at him from between her fingers. “What that does _not_ explain is why you are here _now.”_

The ghost shifted from foot to foot. “Erm, right. Yes.” He smoothed out a wrinkle from the sleeve of his shirt. “Kitty and the Captain are missing.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Alison blinked, frowning. “That is not what I was expecting at all. _Missing_ missing, or just ‘not answering when you yell ambiguously down the hallway’ missing? ”

“What ’s it?” Mike mumbled around a mouthful of pillow, already two-thirds asleep.

Alison shot him an envious glare. “Two of the ghosts are apparently missing,” she sighed. Pressing a hand to her forehead, she pinched the bridge of her nose as she thought. “And you are _absolutely certain_ they aren’t just in bed, or watching a show, or, hell, Thomas, I don’t know, wanting to be alone for a while and just hiding?”

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for one of her ghostly tenants to up and disappear for hours—and even days, in the more memorable instance of Thomas submerging himself in the lake—at a time, fading from beyond the more heavily-trafficked regions of the house and grounds and, as Alison put it, ‘having a good sulk’. She couldn’t blame them—being dead was a psychological crisis she did _not_ have the training or patience to truly unpack—but it always seemed that such instances inevitably resulted in only _more_ headaches for her.

Thomas shook his head emphatically, hair whipping back and forth. “Tis a true mystery,” he lamented. “Mary came to me not long ago to report Kitty’s absence, and following such we convened and—“

“Alison Alison Alison!” Pat and Robin barreled through the wall adjacent to the hallway, followed closely by Mary cradling Humphrey’s head. “Kitty and the Cap are missing!”

“Right.” It seemed sleep was most _definitely_ off the table for now. Stifling a yawn, Alison slid from bed and shrugged into her robe, slamming her feet into a secondary pair of socks and her boots with a poorly-disguised grimace. There was not enough coffee or therapy in the world for any of this. “Downstairs,” she ordered in a hissing whisper, pointing at the door. “At least we can let _Mike_ get some sleep.”

So saying, she stomped out into the hallway, grumbling as the ghosts sailed along beside her, silent for once as they sensed her irritation. Enough moonlight trickled through the windows to prevent her from stubbing her toe on the loose floorboard by the stairs, but it was a narrow miss nonetheless. “Damn…stupid… _house!_ ” she swore fervently, stumbling over the impediment with a graceless hop.

“Oh are we playing _hopscotch_ now?” Julian stepped through the bannister to appear at Alison’s left shoulder, looming over her with a wide grin plastered across his face. “Did I ever tell you about the time—“

Wood groaned as Alison continued resolutely down the creaking staircase, not even turning her head in his direction.

“But perhaps now is not the time.” He fell into step behind her, rolling his head back to cock an eyebrow at the rest of their little entourage. “Lost a few, have we? Looks like the dear Captain is having another ‘identity crisis’—goodness knows he needs to just go ahead and come to terms with everything all at once, these little intermittent episodes are _so_ trite—“

He was so caught up in the sound of his own voice he failed to notice Alison drawing to a stop in the foyer, and instead walked straight through her. “Oh, _christ_ that never feels any better,” he groaned pitifully, doubling up on himself.

“Serves you right,” Pat told him, managing quite an imperious glare as he rolled his eyes and nudged Julian with one foot. “More importantly, Alison, Thomas is correct—Kitty and the Captain really _are_ missing. Cap’s been gone nearly all day—haven’t seen him since after roll call at 0900 and it’s not like him to miss our daily reports at 1800 either—and Kitty supposedly popped off to, er, what did she say?…to ‘look at the stars’ during a commercial break. Then she just never came back.”

“We’s looked in alls the rooms,” Mary added, peering sadly up at Alison. “But they be gone.”

For the first time since her dreams of an uninterrupted night of sleep were crushed, Alison felt a trickle of serious concern. It was not like the Captain to forsake a full day of patrols and reports, and for Kitty to leave Friends mid-episode was unfathomable. “Alright,” Alison ordered, swinging to face the gathered ghosts. “Where have you already checked? Pat,” she singled him out, trusting him to give the most concise report and omit frivolous details.

“We’s—uh, _we’ve—_ checked all of the bedrooms, the attic, the basement, most of the living spaces, and the front grounds. Haven’t had a chance to go near the lake or the woods, or the edge of the grounds back by that wonky section of the fence.” The bit to which he referred was little more than a crumbling ruin, the ancient brick and iron toppled by a long-fallen oak tree in a bygone storm. It had made it onto Mike and Alison’s list of necessary repairs, but as the list itself had more items than the house square feet, well…needless to say it had not yet been addressed.

Frowning, Alison drummed her fingers on the back of a hideously-upholstered armchair. “No hints as to where they might have gone?”

She received a series of grunts and ‘hmms’ in the negative. “Okay, gang, divide and conquer, then.” She tied the sash of her robe and gave the front door and the cold air that whistled noisily through the failing seals a wry glance. “Wish it weren’t so cold, but that’s winter for you.” Pressing her fingers into her forehead, she thought rapidly. “Right. If you lot have already checked most of the house, we should probably fan out and hit the grounds more thoroughly.” The thought of the overgrown woods made her grimace. “Why don’t Pat and Mary check the woods, seeing as you can pass _through_ the trees and sticks and leaves and I don’t fancy stumbling through in the dark. Thomas and Julien, can you go around the fence line and check that for me? I’ll hit the lake and the area around it—Robin, you go wake Fanny and then grab Humphrey and get all the odd bits in between that I’m forgetting?” She wagered that between the two older ghosts and the previous proprietor they held a near-encyclopedic knowledge of Button House and its grounds.

It spoke to the concern of her companions that they did not stop to argue, instead fanning out and stepping through the wall in various directions. Alison slung open the door and slipped outside. If she squinted, she could just catch the faintest trace of Mary and Pat as they moved into the woods, bright shapes cast even brighter by the glow of the moon.

“Lake,” she muttered, collecting her thoughts. “Coldest night of the year to date, missing ghosts, and you pick the _lake_ for your spot to investigate. Brilliant move, Alison.” She stumbled across the lawn and down the far curve of the yard, following the natural decline as it sloped toward the lake. In truth, “pond” would have done it more justice, but it had already been christened as a lake by Thomas and the others, and so “lake” it would remain.

Creeping around the edge of said water body, Alison let her booted feet fall softly, stepping through the mostly-frozen mud as quietly as possible. “Aha!” She could see two figures on the far curve, just where the wall was crumbling, one perched daintily on a massive, flattened pile of brick and the other standing tall and straight beside. Silver light caught in silvering hair and a pair of bright eyes, lending the two figures an ethereal look that even their ghostly states did not usually afford.

It seemed she had found her missing ghosts.

Quietly, Alison tiptoed close, some innate instinct whispering that now was _not_ the proper time to interrupt.

If she shifted _just so_ amongst the reeds and tilted her head slightly to the left, Alison found she was perfectly situated to hear the soft conversation taking place while also maintaining a visual. She had never seen Kitty so upset, and her heart wrenched in her chest to see her normally-bubbly friend—for somewhere along the way, _all_ of her crazy ghosts had indeed become her friends—so distraught. This superseded the usual crocodile tears and overly-dramatic histrionics that she so often employed—instead, the ghost’s head hung low, her shoulders shrugged in on themselves, arms wrapped tightly around the bodice of her dress. What little Alison could see of her face was cast in shadow, only the tears collected in her eyes glinting clear in the moonlight.

A distant part of Alison did pause to wonder how a dead apparition could summon tears, but she was far more concerned with the _reason_ for them than the actual science and so put it from her mind.

“You really didn’t have to stay out here with me, Captain,” she heard Kitty say, the ghost’s voice uncharacteristically meek. “I’m sorry you are out here in the cold.” Kitty’s spoke softly, her words punctuated by hiccoughs and shallow breaths. Alison could see her raise her hand to curve over her mouth, shoulders hitching as she appeared to fight back another wave of tears. “It’s much nicer inside, with the fires burning and the heat running now that Mike has gotten it working. I mean, we can’t feel it, but it’s lovely nonetheless!” The words poured out of her, a hole in a dam that, once broken, could not be stoppered. “Everyone else is there—you should go be with them, not out here with me.” She mustered a watery smile that glittered in the starlight. “It’s silly to be upset anyway, it’s not like it is anything that we can _change.”_

Faintly, Alison could hear the Captain give his patented noncommittal “Hmm.” He stood with his back ramrod straight, arms curved behind his back and hands laced with his swagger stick clasped tightly in between. Still, despite his lack of verbosity, he remained close to Kitty’s side, head angled up to the sky. Moonlight tangled in his hair, turning the salt-and-pepper strands pure silver, and the bright, twinkling lights of the stars scattered across his upturned face like dappled freckles.

Alison’s breath caught in her chest without her entirely knowing why. To see the two of them together, here on the darkened grounds and beyond the familiar realm of the house, was almost a scene out of some fantastical painting—a pair of the unlikeliest of friends who superseded the commonality of time or expectation.

“I don’t think,” the Captain finally said, his words ringing quiet but distinct, “that it is necessarily about things we can or cannot change, Katherine.” He shifted, his parade rest fluttering like a newly-emerged butterfly and then settling, wings falling back into place and fanning out behind him, still and silent and steady. “It is never silly to be upset, particularly when the matter is something so personal.”

Out here, in the heavy silence of the late night, the frigid, frosty evening that seemed to seize any word or breath and smother it in an icy chokehold, his words should have been curt and clipped. Instead, it was perhaps the warmest Alison had ever heard him sound, his tone thoughtful and words measured. Even his posture shifted, his spine arcing forward ever-so-slightly to that other lost soul who sat with him in the night.

Kitty sighed, leaning back with her hands splayed out across the brick, kicking her feet and petticoats out in front of her as she peered up at the sky. “It’s just so _awful_ sometimes,” she wailed, the Captain wincing at the sudden return to her standard volume, “this being dead. I know we can’t be anything different—Thomas will always have been shot, and in love, and Pat will always have that arrow in his neck, and Humphrey barely even _has_ a neck—“ She paused to suck in a deep, unnecessary breath, “but I feel like there is just so much I missed that I can never have. The show Alison gave us, Friends, it’s so very lovely but it makes me feel so sad. Watching Monica and Chandler, and Ross and Rachel and their love affair—I’ve never _known_ that.” She gave a great, shuddering sob. “I never _will_.”

Even without the moonlight Alison would have been able to see the Captain’s discomfort clear as day. He twitched, weight shifting from foot to foot, and raised a hand to smooth across his mustache. “Ah—well—“ His hand flopped uselessly to his side, its partner half-extended toward his companion as he wavered, hovering indecisively.

Alison _almost_ went to them then, for Kitty when she was truly upset tugged at her heartstrings in a way few others could. The ghost was always so sweet, so innocent, that to see her now, pouring out what appeared to be centuries of repressed sadness, was nearly more than Alison could bear.

Evidently the same held true for the Captain, because before Alison could take so much as one step beyond her little nook he had thrown his military bearing to the winds and abandoned years of conditioned aloofness and settled awkwardly beside his companion.

Alison’s jaw dropped. She had rarely seen the Captain offer _any_ contact to _any_ of the ghosts, and yet here he was now holding out his arm and allowing Kitty to bury her face against the starched fabric of his military jacket, tucking his hand awkwardly about her shoulders and looking entirely out of his depth as he did so. He mumbled something too softly for Alison to hear. She frowned and squinted thoughtfully at the distance between them, hesitating—she tried so hard to respect the ghosts’ privacy, particularly in delicate instances, but this was _unprecedented_ —and army-crawled a few yards through the reeds. She sent up a quick and silent ‘thank you’ to any listening deity for the ice-cold temperatures that had frozen the normally-muddy bank solid.

“Do you really think so?” she heard Kitty say, and took that as a sign that her approach has passed unnoticed. She silently congratulated herself on her stealth, and rather thought the Captain would approve.

“I do.” The Captain’s voice was soft, but audible over the faint whirl of the winter wind—if only just so. “Look at all the rest of us—we each have our regrets, yes?” His knuckles of the hand not awkwardly patting Kitty on the shoulder tightened around his swagger stick. Alison could see his eyes close in a grimace. “We are ghosts—we all have regrets, things we did not say, missions we did not complete.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Affections we did not acknowledge.”

Kitty sniffled. “It’s not fair,” she whispered into the wind. “Why do we have to stay when everyone we cared about is already gone? What did we do to deserve this? All the stories, all the songs and romances, these ‘movies’ Alison lets us watch—everyone has _some_ one there for them.” She shifted, curling in on herself within the curve of the Captain’s arm, looking frightfully small. “Why can’t we have that too?”

It was hard for Alison to remember sometimes that Kitty was one of the older ghosts, at least in terms of actual time spent dead—she was so young physically, and so sweetly naive, that it was all too easy to get caught up in that facade and forget that the cheerful, friendly young woman was also a centuries-old specter who died well before her time.

Even the most optimistic soul would have to have a lifetime’s worth of regrets.

There was a long moment of silence. Alison sat frozen, unable to stir, her heart breaking anew.

“I don’t know.”

If Kitty’s voice was weighted with a pain beyond her years, the Captain’s was _ancient._ His arm tightened across Kitty’s shoulder, his free hand forming a fist that rose to press against the bridge of his nose. Alison could see him squeeze his eyes shut, mouth twisted in a grimace.

“I don’t _know,”_ and oh _christ_ the Captain was crying, really crying, his stern mask crumbling as he lost his battle against the glittering tears that now stained his cheeks. He was all but silent, shoulders rising and falling in a gradually-slowing roll as he scrambled to reign in his emotions, a shuddering heave in and out as he screwed up his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry, Katherine,” he apologized, staring fixedly at the ground, obviously still trying and failing to regain control. His free hand flexed against his thigh, tightening into a fist. “I came—I came out here to assist you, not unload my own regrets upon you.”

Throwing propriety to the wind, Kitty turned and flung her arms about him, catching him up in an honest-to-goodness hug and squeezing him until Alison could almost swear she heard a joint pop.

The Captain looked entirely taken aback, eyes bright and wide against his pale face, body stiffening in shock as Kitty hugged him. “I don’t think—“ he began.

“Shush,” Kitty ordered, and he was so startled at the command he obeyed without thought, mouth snapping shut.

The small part of Alison not aching to go join them and offer her own support snickered at the absolutely dumbfounded look on his face. He looked so _lost_ , caught up in Kitty’s constricting offer of comfort.

“We both have things to think about,” Kitty said, looking up at him. “I don’t know what yours are, I don’t think you’ll tell me—you don’t have to.” She cast a timid smile up at him. “I think we’re friends, though, and this is what friends do—we help each other.” Her eyes widened slightly in sudden epiphany, her smile growing to match. “Oh!” she exclaimed delightedly, “ _that_ is something that is different. _Friends._ We do have each other, after all.”

“ _There_ you two are!” Pat’s received call sliced through the moment like a hot knife through butter. The Captain’s eyes went wide and wild, and he bolted upright, slipping out of Kitty’s embrace and off of his seat and jerking to attention, whirling to peer out into the darkness beyond. “No need to get up on our account,” Pat told him softly as he approached, flanked by the rest of the ghosts. “Was hoping we could join you, actually.”

“Moonah,” Robin grunted in agreement, nodding up at the sky and scampering over to tap Kitty on the nose with a wide grin. He cradled Humphrey’s head in his arms. Scampering over to the ruin of a fence, he clambered up the remaining bit of wall, perching high on the towering brick and setting Humphrey upright so that he could stare down at their little gathering.

Kitty giggled, and Alison could see the Captain settle back into a much more relaxed bearing, his face still caught blushingly somewhere between fond regard and utter bemusement. “Ah, yes, well—very well,” he finally agreed, stepping aside to make room for Thomas and Mary to slide onto the brick next to Kitty. Mary picked up her hand and gave it a tight squeeze, tilting her head to rest on Kitty’s shoulder. “Times be hards sometimes,” she told the younger ghost, smiling, “but we’s gets through them.”

“Quite right,” Thomas agreed. “Even without fair Alison’s love, or that of my beloved Isabelle, there is always a bright spot to be found if one only takes the time to look.”

“Well said, for once,” Fanny declared, striding up to stand imperiously behind the three seated ones, staring up at the moon. She placed a hand on Kitty’s other shoulder. “You are hardly alone, my dears, even if you only have _this_ outrageous assortment of companions.”

Neither Alison nor the Captain missed the plural, and his eyes widened and then softened, crinkling around the corners. Alison clapped her hands over her mouth to contain a delighted giggle. She could see Kitty’s lips twitch and wriggle, slowly blossoming into a smile moon-bright and blooming. “Friends forever?” she asked, clasping her hands delightedly in front of her bosom.

“As though we have any choice,” Julia drawled, swaggering up to lean against one of the still-intact sections of the wall. “At least it’s _always_ a full moon with me around.” He waggled his eyebrows and cackled as Fanny huffed in disgust. He cocked out a hip and an eyebrow, bowing, then settled as the others began to chat. Leaning over to the Captain, he frowned. “Did you get her calmed down?” he asked, much more quietly.

The Captain’s eyebrows rose and hovered. He squinted at the other man, attempting to determine whether he was in earnest, and then finally gave a short, jerky nod of his head. “As best as I could, yes,” he finally disclosed. “Sometimes it just gets to oneself—all those negative thoughts and regrets, festering and gnawing away at one until he simply cannot put them it of his—or her—mind.”

Julian’s answering look was far too knowing, and far _, far_ too sad. “Wouldn’t know a thing about it,” he declared flippantly. His arm shot out as he spoke, hand curling about the Captain’s shoulder and squeezing. “Always the eternal optimist, me.”

“Pull the other one, mate,” Pat chortled, sidling up to the Captain’s other side. He threaded their fingers together, forming a strange chain between him and the Captain and Julian, three vastly different individuals linked by circumstance and chance and—though patently unacknowledged—mutual respect and affection. “Took dying for me to really appreciate all the things I had in life, sure. Miss it like anything.” He squeezed the Captain’s hand, studiously ignoring the flush that spread across the taller man’s cheeks as he did. “Doesn’t mean I can’t find the bright spots here, too. Best family I could have died into, really.”

“Or been inherited by,” the Captain agreed, lips twitching into a crooked half-smile as he pitched his voice to carry across the grounds.

The words landed on Alison like a sledgehammer. “Stealth my ass,” she muttered, blushing a deep red and stumbling upright. Distractedly, one hand drifted down to brush dirt from her knees, it’s reaching awkwardly for the back of her neck. “Ah…” She squinted through the darkness in a fruitless attempt to read the nuances of his expression.

“Alison!” Kitty clapped her hands together delightedly, clutching them before her chest and giving a delighted little wiggle. “Oh, do come join us! Where did you come from?”

“Are you certain?” Alison asked hesitantly. She smiled back at Kitty, relieved that she seemed to be drifting quite rapidly back to her standard, upbeat self. Though her gaze pointed one direction, her words were most assuredly _actually_ directed toward the Captain, apology heavy in her voice.

He met her eyes with a slight nod, lifting one eyebrow in a wry, resigned smile. Alison offered a small one of her own in return, lips twitching as she inclined her own head, trying to put everything she _absolutely_ could not say into the single expression.

“Of course you are _always_ welcome, Alison,” Fanny replied, appearing directly behind her—and only _somewhat_ smirking as her descendent jumped—and ushering her forward with a few waves of her hands. “This is Button House, is it not? You are a Button, are you not?—and perhaps the best one of us to date.”

“Aye, lass, one of the team. Except, you know, you’re still living—“

“Don’t ruin the moment, Pat,” Humphrey chided.

Alison chuckled, this time quite wetly, and looked about their odd little gathering with glittering eyes. “I love you guys, you know that?” she asked. “Every single one of you nutters.” They stammered and blushed and giggled, fidgeting and shifting in place as she caught and held each of their gazes in turn. “I know I can’t actually _touch_ you, which really sucks, by the way, because I _really_ want to hug all of you right now—“ She cut her eyes over to the Captain briefly, touching her hand to her heart and grinning as he blushed, “but if there is anything I can ever do for you to truly, genuinely _help—_ well, just say the words.”

“Oh my dear,” Humphrey said, from his perch above, staring down at their assortment of oddballs, “I believe you already have—so very much more than you could ever imagine.”


End file.
